new church

All I ever wanted was to swallow the whiskey in your throat

I didn’t hear the church in your chest calling me home

with a makeshift choir caroling to my spine

When I was six years old I started loving Jesus on purpose

I didn’t feel the church doors in every handshake after

with sunday evening blues stamped on the back of my neck

You’ve got them too those blues from a mourning of service

I didn’t see even the pastor gets stung by the whiskey

when the years of service settle into the cracks of his palm

And the wrinkles in his leather bible are too wide to see through

I didn’t know I’d search for another pair of cracked hands

with a chest fit for a babe’s head I was born in a house already full